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Friday, November 15, 2013

Sepia Saturday: Doppelganger for Velma

Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to
share family history through old photographs.

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt invites all Homo
Sepians to share photos of people framed in a doorway.

While not exactly IN the doorway, the 1925 varsity
basketball team of Harrisonburg Teacher’s College posed framed in the archway
of the porch leading to the doorway of their home away from campus while on
their Southwestern Virginia basketball tour.

HTC Basketball Team
Nashville, Tennessee 1925

The quality of the photo is so poor and the size so small
that the who’s and why’s for years failed to pique my interest until I noticed
that the people are the same ones as in this official team photo glued to the
last page of my grandaunt Velma Davis Woodring’s college scrapbook.

Official Team photo 1925

Now THAT picture grabbed my attention. Look at Aunt Velma kneeling on the front
row (2nd from the right). She made the varsity team as a
freshman. What an athlete she must have
been!

So what is a dutiful niece to do but search for the story
of her aunt’s contributions in the glory days of the HTC basketball team? Fortunately, the 1925 yearbook printed a
summary of the winning season declaring 6 wins, 2 losses, and 1 tie.

Culminating the 1925 season was the week-long
Southwestern Virginia tour. It was a
real road trip, too, beginning at Roanoke and moving on to Radford, both in
Virginia. Then the team went to
Nashville, Tennessee where they lost to Peabody College but not before Peabody
exhausted all its reserve players to defeat the Purple & Gold Basketeers of
HTC. HTC then finished the tour in
Knoxville with a win over the University of Tennessee. Velma must have been thrilled to be part of
such a season and such a team.

Then this dutiful niece saw THIS page of the yearbook:

from The Schoolma'am 1925

Then I studied the names of the players:

That’s curious.
Velma’s name isn’t there. Nine
names. Nine girls in the photo plus the
coach. Certainly Velma didn’t quit the team – the photo
was taken by a photographer in Nashville.

With the help of the yearbook, I started matching names
to faces. And then there it was:

Not Velma at all!
It was Jessie Rosen. Shoot!

But wouldn’t YOU think it was Velma too, knowing Velma looked
like this:

Please
visit my friends at Sepia Saturday – they’ve left the door open for you.

Kat, I have Velma's yearbook from 1926, but I used the 1925 yearbook available online at Ancestry. Either Velma didn't purchase the book from her freshman year or it was lost over the years. Her sister Violetta has both of her yearbooks though. (I say "both" because only 2 years of college were required to become a teacher.)

How Velma came to have these photos is a mystery. I find it hard to believe the school could afford to pay for extra people on such a trip but maybe so. Velma has a picture of the team visiting Lookout Mountain. When I discovered she wasn't on the team, I wondered why she had these pictures. Did a friend on the team give them to her? Did she travel along like an assistant to the coach? Inquiring minds want to know.

I was going to say that Velma is prettier ....and then I saw that someone beat me to it! Back I the day, girls' basketball was so different from guys. The girls could only dribble and take 3 steps and then pass. I was curious about the "side center" position!

Marey, Even when I played b-ball in gym class (back when dinosaurs roamed), girls played just as you described. Three dribbles and pass. What's more, we were limited to half the court, as if we couldn't run the full distance. In 1925, play was even weirder. The court was divided into 3 parts. The guards played ONLY at the end with the opponent's goal; the centers played in the center; the forwards did the shooting. My understanding of the jumping and side center positions is that a TALL girl would be the jumper, hopefully tapping the ball to the side center who could run along the sides and get the ball to one of her forwards.

Like Wendy, I'm old enough to have been limited to half the court -- we weren't supposed to run that much; it apparently wasn't good for our ovaries or something equally stupid! But back to your photo: did you notice that the two kneelers on the right folded their uniforms up to expose their knees? Some kind of political statement? I'm grinning as I write this...

The mixup between Jessie & Velma is quite understandable. They could almost be twins or, at the very least, look-alike sisters. And like some of the other comments, when I played basketball in high school, we were limited to half the court & you were either a guard or a forward, but at least we wore short shorts! (I don't remember the 3 dribbles & pass, however.) I can't imagine flopping around in those uniform skirts - although even when my daughters played basketball in high school & college (full court), a few girls did wear skirts for religious reasons.

Here's my theory....yearbook sports editor was a prankster named Jess Rosen...Jessie's twin brother, also Velma's former boyfriend who she dumped at the Sports Banquet. It really is Velma and that is why it is part of her memorabilia. Ridiculous...I know. Great detective work and sequencing of events as well as follow up comments on the court rules and players assignments. In 1960-61 as a HS Freshwoman BB'er we played half court...guards dare not cross that center line. In 1963-64 one player was designated Rover...played guard and forward and full court...was also TALL to do the center jump off! I loved playing Rover!!! Thanks for the reminder and memories.

Yeah -- I wonder if Velma purposely played a trick on us, pasting that team photo into her book, like she was one of them. Now that I look at her class picture, her "credits" include the YWCA but no mention of ever playing on the b-ball team. Hrmph ~

Wendy, I agree with the others: Velma is so much prettier...not that Jessie isn't attractive, herself. Just sayin'.

Being with family last weekend, we got to discussing basketball in that era and earlier. I was surprised to hear that my own grandmother was in a girls' team for her school quite a few years before this. The uniforms included a bow in each player's hair. Must have been the southern touch ;)

In Australia we have netball where you are restricted in where you can run, couldn't step, had position titles and always used to have more 'demure' uniforms. Then there's basketball where you can dribble and run all over the court, and don't have 'designated' position titles. Is it different in USA?

Nice research of a dutiful niece. Velma is pretty. Is the lady on the right their teacher or coach or adviser? Don't know how they call that in their time. She's dressed, and her hairstyle too, (at least to me) like someone from about two decades before 1925.

Yes, that was the coach, Mrs. Althea Loose Johnston. She was credited with remarkable developments in the phys ed department and she attracted statewide attention as a coach. Her husband was the physics professor. My dorm in my freshman year of college was named for them -- Johnston Hall.

Goodness, they are so similar, especially in the team photo - maybe the person labelling the photo got it wrong, stranger things have happened. The girls were quite daring, showing a bit of leg back then!

Funny and a great example of why often searches and documents on ancestry.com is different than what it really was...still interesting photos from a time when sports were not that predominant for females.

You bring up an interesting point. The "truth" is only as good as the memory of the person passing it along. I have photos that a 90-yr old cousin identified for me, but I have since learned that some of the names are not correct.

Oh gee, sometimes the answers are glum, but also, at the same time we can discover other higher notes along the way. It's the search that excites me most. As for Jessie, why not a happier smile! I did like seeing the original photo, it may be missing pieces, but it's rich in color and detail! Aces on that shot!

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About Me

My name is Wendy. About twenty years ago, I helped my mother research the Jolletts. Since retiring from teaching, I have expanded my research which I share here. When I’m not looking for my own family, I index for FamilySearch and the Greene County Historical Society.
Welcome to Jollett Etc. Please leave a comment to let me know you were here. If you have more information or believe we are related, EMAIL ME at wendymath at cox dot net